Evergreen

by Cox, Matthew S.

  At the creak of the door, he glanced back, his expression a weird mix of worry and smile. “Hey.”

  She walked over to stand beside him. “Hey.”

  “Groundhog Day. Didn’t we do the ‘hey’ thing already?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So this is the world.” He again peered up at the stars.

  “Such as it is.”

  “Doesn’t feel too different, does it?” He looked over at her. “I mean, except for not having electricity.”

  Harper shrugged. “It’s not that easy to let go of my parents and friends.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Sometimes I forget that most people don’t hate their parents.”

  “My dad used to say it’s messed up that people need a license to drive but anyone can have kids.”

  “You can’t legislate life like that.” Tyler quirked an eyebrow.

  “No. He wasn’t serious. Just saying like so many people who shouldn’t be parents have kids. Something that important, being a parent, and anyone can do it. It’s like someone’s whole life in your hands. Messing up as a parent could totally change who they grow up to be. Lot of responsibility.”

  “Yeah.” He looked down. “Lorelei likes you.”

  She took his hand. “She likes you, too.”

  Tyler shrugged. “She pretty much likes everyone who isn’t mean to her. Hey, you know things are kinda crazy and random now. If… anything ever happened, will you take care of her?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you.” She squeezed his hand, surprised by her sudden sense of possessiveness toward him. “You’re not going anywhere, okay?” Crap. I don’t even know this guy. Why am I feeling like this?

  “Just trying to be realistic. Anything could happen to anyone now. Look at that guy your father had to deal with today. Ran out of insulin and gone. Heard gunshots earlier, too. Stray bullets don’t care who they hit.”

  “Yeah.” She looked down and explained about the attempted robbery of the quartermaster. “You’re right. We could die at any moment.”

  “I didn’t mean that in a romantic way.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “I know.”

  Tyler stiffly grasped her shoulder and kissed her like he’d never done so before in his life. She grinned, finding it cute. Any of them could be killed five minutes from now. Why keep waiting for the storybook-perfect moment that might never come. Uncharacteristic spontaneity pushed her into a tighter embrace, kissing him deeper, and not much caring if she wound up back at Tyler’s house for more.

  “What are you doing?” rasped Tyler.

  “Kissing you.” She crossed her wrists behind his neck and went in for more.

  He got into it for a little while, no longer seeming like he’d never touched a girl before. After a few minutes, he abruptly pulled back. “Wait. This wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not you.” Tyler looked off to the side. “You’re way too beautiful for me and so nice. You probably already have a boyfriend.”

  “Yeah.” She squeezed his hand. “Micah hasn’t called me in a while.”

  Tyler laughed.

  “He could be dead. I don’t know. We could be dead tomorrow.”

  “We could.” He brushed a hand over her cheek, a spark of something in his eyes. “I never thought a girl like you would even look at me.”

  “A ‘girl like me?’”

  “You had to have been a cheerleader. Popular. Probably rich.”

  “Zero for three.” She poked him in the side. “I mean, we weren’t poor but no one could accuse us of being rich. Never did the cheerleader thing. I’m way too shy. And, I’m for sure not—wasn’t—with the popular crowd.”

  “What crowd were you in?”

  “None really. Somewhere between the hippies, the introverts who sit under trees all day reading, and the nerds. But none of them. Didn’t read much. I’m a gamer. And my grades were too good to be one of the popular girls.”

  “Band geek?”

  She puffed, blowing hair off her face. “Introvert, remember? No way could I handle being in front of an audience.”

  “Nathan, one of my pothead roommates, thinks cops are all bullies who never grew out of wanting to feel better than everyone else. How’s a shy girl wind up on the militia?”

  Harper leaned against him, hugging his arm. “I’m still trying to figure that out. Mostly, I didn’t want to let them take Dad’s shotgun away. I don’t trust anyone else to protect Maddie. Now I’ve got Jonathan to watch out for, too.”

  “They would’ve taken the gun?”

  “Yeah. I think they let people keep handguns. Ugh. It’s so messed up.” She buried her face against his shoulder. “I can’t believe the stuff I’ve done. Shooting people, sleeping in alleys.” Harper looked up at him. “Kissing a boy I barely know.”

  He managed a weak smile.

  She stretched up and kissed him again, craving that sense of being with someone she could talk to. Someone at her level, not a parent, not a child. Maybe they wouldn’t wind up having sex at all. She still couldn’t explain why she felt drawn to him, but being the only two teens in an entire town—or what remained of it—had to be a large part of it.

  Tyler backed off again. “No… it isn’t right.”

  “Nothing’s right anymore.” Frustrated, she let go of his arm and took a step, raking her hands through her hair. “The whole world is gone. We’re going to run out of canned food eventually. What if the farm doesn’t work? No one’s making any medicine anymore. We all might’ve sucked up enough radiation to kill us already. No one even knows how bad a dose we got.”

  Tyler stepped closer and brushed a hand through her hair. “You’re not losing any. If you got a bad dose, it would already be falling out.”

  His touch sent an electric tingle down her back. She blushed and bit her lip. The conflict in his eyes frustrated her. He simultaneously seemed to want to be with her as much as he wanted to run off alone into the ruins.

  “I dunno if I’m going to stay on the militia. Especially if I run out of shells. I can’t fight at all.” She held her arms out to the sides. “Look at me. I’m scrawny. Once we run out of bullets, I can’t be on the militia. And what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I worrying about bullets? I shouldn’t care about having ‘enough ammo.’ I’m seventeen!”

  “You’re not scrawny.”

  “No? What would you call me then?”

  “Kinda hard to see with that fluffy coat on, but you’re, I dunno. Normal.”

  “Normal.” She folded her arms.

  “Yeah. Normal. Okay, a bit on the thin side, but you probably do yoga and eat lots of granola.”

  She laughed. “One for two.”

  “Went to yoga with your mother, right?”

  “Ugh.” Harper rolled her eyes. “Am I that much of a cliché?”

  “Nah. Well. Did you go to Starbucks after yoga?”

  “Butt.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

  He laughed. “Don’t worry too much. You’ve got it pretty good here. Not like the world went total Mad Max.”

  “You didn’t see Lakewood.” She folded her arms.

  “No, I wasn’t there.”

  She leaned against him again, shivering at the chilly air. “It was bad.” A bit over a whisper, she explained the blue gang, meeting Cliff in the mall, having that guy try to grab Madison straight out of the street, and finding Summer running for her life with no pants and her hands tied behind her back.

  “Wow.” Tyler blinked. “That’s messed up. I think most people are decent… except for the ones who aren’t.”

  An unexpected chuckle slipped out from under her gloom. She moved in close again. “It’s cold out here.”

  “Yeah, well. That kinda happens in winter.”

  She blinked. Is he really that oblivious?

  “Your dad’s gonna shoot me any second.”

  “No…” She let her head fall against his shoulder. “He’s being pr
otective. And I love that he’s willing to look out for me, become my second dad. Heh, you know the first time he saw me, he put a gun to my head?”

  “Really?” Tyler blinked.

  “Yeah. Well. Okay, it wasn’t the first time. He busted me for shoplifting when I was fourteen. But I mean since the world blew up. Maddie and I went into the mall to look for some clothes, and I saw Jonathan. He ran away from me, so I chased him around a corner thinking he might be alone—and Cliff was there.” She made a finger gun and poked him in the forehead.

  “That’s wild.”

  “Yeah. Wild. I nearly pissed myself.” Harper leaned back and gazed up into the stars. “My real dad died ’cause I couldn’t kill someone.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your parents. I didn’t like mine at all. They tried to kill me a couple times. Poison. I ran away at seventeen.”

  Harper gasped. “Holy shit! I’m so sorry.” She reached for his hand, but he backed up.

  “Sorry. I… gotta go.” He took another step back, hesitation and conflict clear on his face. “You’re a really awesome person, Harper. I just… Sorry.”

  She stood there staring into the dark as the rapid scuffing of his shoes on the dirt grew distant. Momentarily embarrassed at being so forward, she blushed, but Tyler had a point… either one of them could die any day. That had been technically true before the war. People could get hit by cars, or suffer accidents, unforeseen health problems… whatever. But everything had changed. Any day now, some random person could try to rob Liz again and start shooting.

  He kinda seemed to like her, but having a boy act like he couldn’t wait to get away was new. Maybe she scared him by kissing him so fast. And true, that had felt a bit weird. Tyler didn’t give off closeted vibes, so she didn’t think he lacked any interest in girls. Though, something like that could be a reason why parents would try to poison him.

  “What’s his deal, anyway?” Harper bit her lip. Duh. His parents tried to kill him. He’s probably got issues.

  29

  Too Quiet

  Harper roamed the streets the next day after dropping the kids off at school.

  Her thoughts orbited Tyler, trying to make sense of the conflicting signals he’d given off. One minute, he’d been totally into kissing her. The next, afraid of her. She analyzed everything she did or said yesterday in an attempt to figure out where she screwed up. It stood out in her mind that he’d had such a strong reaction to Cliff telling them about the man who died after running out of insulin. Could Tyler be a diabetic, too?

  She gasped. Of course! That’s it!

  “He asked me to take Lorelei if anything happened to him. Oh, shit. Maybe he’s on insulin, too and he knows he’s gonna die soon.”

  Harper stopped in the street, shivering from emotion. No wonder he acted that way. He didn’t want her getting close to him only to drop dead and break her heart. She started crying at the tragic, romantic, noble idea of it… but collected herself after only a minute or so.

  “I’m getting all wound up over guessing. Should I ask him or—”

  A loud crash came from a few houses ahead on the left along with a woman’s angry scream. The bellowing shouts of a man followed, then a series of loud slams and the same woman shrieking in fear. Harper swung the shotgun off her shoulder into a two-handed grip and ran toward the commotion, coming to a stop about six paces from the door.

  Am I supposed to like kick it in or shout at them to knock it off?

  The man roared something about stupid and lazy. His wife or whatever started to shout over him, but her voice stopped along with a meaty smack, and a thud.

  Harper pulled her air horn can out, raised it high, and sounded one long blast.

  A woman’s crying apology filled in the silence in the wake of the horn.

  Grr. Harper widened her stance, aimed at the door, and shouted “Hey! Get away from her.”

  “Mind your business, bitch,” shouted a man.

  A series of quick air horn pips came from the distance, mostly to the south.

  “Militia!” shouted Harper. “Get the hell away from her, now!”

  Two footsteps thudded inside the house, then a quick shriek, and a heavy slam.

  “Where do you think you’re going? I didn’t tell you to go anywhere,” yelled the man.

  The woman screamed.

  Harper rushed forward. Certain the door would laugh at her if she tried to ram it down, she grabbed the knob first and pulled. Amazingly, it opened easily. She ran inside toward the commotion of a brawl knocking furniture and cans around in the kitchen. A dark-haired woman in her thirties wearing only an oversized T-shirt crawled back and forth under the table trying to avoid a man about the same age dressed in flannel and jeans. Neither wore shoes. Cans littered the floor and counter from where they spilled.

  “Hey!” shouted Harper.

  Both people turned to stare at her. The woman had a giant bruise on her face. A crescent-shaped cut along her forehead looked an awful lot like the aftereffect of a hurled soup can. Blood streamed from her nose.

  “Don’t shoot him,” whispered the woman. “Please.”

  “Screw off, kid,” snarled the man. “Your daddy know you have his gun?”

  She shivered with rage. “Does yours know your dick is so small you have to hit your wife?”

  He glared at her. “Why, you little…”

  “Out the back door.” Harper gestured at it with the shotgun. “Make a move toward her or take one step toward me, this is gonna be over real fast.”

  “Don’t shoot Tommy, please.” The woman crawled toward Harper. “We’ve got a son.”

  “Does he hit your boy, too?”

  The guy leaned at her. “Oh, a mouthy thing.” He took a step toward her.

  Harper pointed the Mossberg at his face and narrowed her eyes, fully intending to fire if he moved even another inch closer. “Don’t.”

  His anger shifted gears from raging to simmering. Perhaps he saw something in her stare, a certain glint that said she’d already killed and wouldn’t hesitate. He leaned away, raising his hands. The woman kept crawling toward her, likely to grab her around the middle any second. Though she felt sorry for her, if that woman knocked her off balance, that guy would be on her in a hot second—and probably beat her to death.

  Harper sidestepped left. “Ma’am, please stay back. If you grab me, I can’t trust what Tommy’s going to do.”

  She continued crawling after her.

  “That means if you grab me, I have to shoot him.”

  The woman stopped. “No. Please don’t kill him. My Tommy.”

  “Is an asshole.”

  A tentative air horn bleep went off somewhere nearby.

  “In here!” shouted Harper. She waited a few seconds, then gingerly released her left hand from the front end of the shotgun, keeping it trained on Tommy one-armed.

  He stared at the tip of the barrel, only a few feet away from his nose. She asked him not to move with her eyes while reaching into her pocket for her air horn. Fortunately, both he and the woman remained still as she pulled it out and sounded a long, painfully loud 911 bleep.

  “Jesus…” Tommy cringed back, hands clamped over his ears.

  The woman cringed back, also covering her ears.

  Annapurna tromped through the house to the kitchen, her AR-15 not quite pointed at anyone. Ken, and Marcie followed soon after.

  “You sounded an alert?” asked Annapurna.

  “Yeah.” Harper pointed at the woman kneeling on the floor. “Heard them screaming. Think he mashed her in the face with a can.” She explained what she heard and saw, and that Tommy nearly came after her.

  Ken holstered his handgun and walked up on Tommy. “Again? Really, Tom? You know you can’t keep doing this shit. And I wouldn’t test Harper. She might look sweet and innocent, but your head wouldn’t be the first one she filled with buckshot.”

  “Oh, she is sweet. Just not so innocent now.” Marcie sighed. “None of us are.”


  “It’s my fault,” said the woman. “I miscounted. I thought we had more than we did. We ran out of corn. Tommy loves corn, you know. I told him we had some, but we don’t.”

  “Rachel…” Marcie holstered her Beretta and helped the woman up. “Come on. We need to talk. And I need to get you over to see Doc Hale.”

  Rachel looked down at her bare feet. “I’m not dressed to go outside.”

  “Well go get dressed. C’mon.” Marcie walked her out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  Harper lowered the shotgun, finally breathing again. She stood there like a fifth wheel while Ken and Annapurna grilled Tommy about hitting his wife, evidently for the fifth time that month.

  “One more time like this, and Ned’s gonna kick you out of town,” said Ken.

  “Let him. My wife and kid will go where I go.” Tommy folded his arms. “Ain’t none of Ned’s business what happens under my roof.”

  “Actually, it is.” Annapurna shot him a glare. “We’re not savages here in Evergreen. You want that, you’re free to wander off into wherever.”

  He glared at them.

  Rachel, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a winter coat, emerged from the back and went with Marcie out the front door, refusing to look toward Tommy. Ken and Annapurna held an uncomfortably silent staring match with him for about five minutes before Ken nodded toward the hallway out and started walking.

  Harper followed, keeping a cautious eye on Tommy. Annapurna brought up the rear. No one said a word until the three of them collected on the street outside the house.

  “So, what happens now?” asked Harper.

  “We’re going to have Rachel stay either at HQ or the medical center for a little while. The boy, too. Keep them both away from Tommy.” Ken shook his head. “This guy might be a threat to them out of spite.”

  “What about me?” Harper eyed the house. “He’s gonna come after me now, too, isn’t he?”

  Annapurna sighed. “It is possible, but unlikely. I think he understands you wouldn’t hesitate.”

  A lifeless chuckle slipped out of Harper’s mouth. Ironic. “I hate that it feels like the best answer to problems anymore is to shoot someone.” She sighed. “Well, not the best. I mean the easiest.”